Senate draws battle line with NNPC GCEO Kyari, gives 24-hour deadline to appear
The Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, Mele Kyari, has been given a 24-hour ultimatum by the senate to come before it for the defense of the 2024 budget.
On Wednesday, December 6, 2023, Senator Adeola Olamilekan, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, informed the Senate of this.
The upper legislative chamber and Kyari have not lost their cool, as they pledged to remove the head of the NNPC and other senior executives due to the purported N12 trillion spent on turnaround maintenance (TAM) of the nation’s refineries.
Olamilekan, who requested Kyari’s appearance alongside the CEO of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), issued a warning, stating that Kyari’s non-appearance would weaken the legislature and disrupt the proceedings.
Budgetary worries for 2024
Olamilekan drew attention to the fact that the two authorities must provide a list of every single company in Nigeria that is operating under an OML license, along with a daily total of all allowed manufacturing output.
The congressman voiced worries that the NNPCL, which he claimed belonged to the Federal Government and was therefore accountable to it and the other three branches of government, was to blame for some of the income needed to fund the 2024 budget.
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Remember that the Senate had drawn a battle line with NNPC approximately two weeks prior after the latter rejected a second time a summons to appear before its committee looking into over N12 trillion in expenditure on turn around maintenance of the nation’s refineries between 2010 and 2023.
The Senate panel’s attempts to move forward with the probe were impeded by Kyari’s absence, whose entity is at the center of it. The red chamber threatened to fire and prosecute the officials implicated.
The committee threatened to fire and imprison some of the invited agencies, including NNPCL, Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), and their subsidiaries. The chief executive officers of these agencies sent representatives in lieu of showing up.
More to come.
